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Monday, October 27, 2008

Problem: Unable to enable FDE (Full Disk Encryption) on re-imaged Dell e6400 laptop. The settings button is grayed out and there is no option to encrypt the drive, only password restrict access to the drive.

Solution: Make sure that your SATA drive mode in the BIOS is set to AHCI or ATA. IRRT will not allow the WAVE systems FDE module to be configured.

The Story: After fighting with this for many days and finally surrendering my pride and chatting online with Dell support with no results, I emailed Wave Systems (the makers of the Wave Security Suite products included in Dells) and they promptly responded by email advising me that the only supported SATA modes are legacy ATA and AHCI.